Today is my birthday. It’s not a milestone birthday for me this year, but it feels like one anyway.

I think it’s the changing over to a new decade. Those always seemed like big milestones to me when I was a kid.

Growing up, THE FUTURE was a big, shiny distant thing, filled with robots and flying cars and a Jetsons-esque lifestyle – the future was the year 2000. When I got there, it wasn’t as big, shiny and looming as I thought it would be.

In the year 2000, I lived in a walk-up apartment in Brooklyn without a car or a robot maid. I worked on the World Wide Web, a relatively shiny, new thing that allowed people to communicate with each other over long distances, but it wasn’t even the one that we have now. It was slow and light on graphics and photos, and people still used their phones to dial into it. There was no Facebook or Twitter. Napster was alive and well, allowing users to steal music.

Before the year 2000, I used to journal about what my life might be like when I reached that magical year. Most of my writing was uncertainty and speculation – as if I was afraid to commit real plans to paper. Perhaps I intuitively knew how powerful writing down your dreams could be. “Be careful what you wish for – it could come true.”

Writing down your future can make it happen much faster than you ever anticipated. It can be scary to write down your dreams in minute detail, only to have them show up on your doorstep within weeks of writing them down. It makes you wonder, “Why didn’t I wish for this sooner?”

Digging through old journals this week, I found one from 2002, the year I met my husband. After 9/11, I did a lot of soul searching and took a self-development course that had me examining my current path and dreams. One of the exercises revealed that I wanted to work with food, explore other ways I could make money by writing, and travel around the world. Shortly after I did this exercise, my dreams started coming true.

I fulfilled my travel dream and left New York for three months. I the most wonderful experience meeting people while traveling on my own through New Zealand, Australia and South East Asia. I made new friends, saw new places and had exciting adventures – surfing, bungee jumping, rappelling, and spending lots of time outdoors.

When I came back from my travels, I transitioned from working as a web project manager to a position where I was creating and writing marketing materials. I learned how to write to sell the value of a company’s offerings. I learned about this other side of business that I didn’t know before. And I was fulfilled by the creativity of it – something that I never would get in my former life in journalism.

And then there was the food thing. A strange dream of mine, because I never considered working with food. The last time I had food experience was working at the food court in a mall. Definitely not the kind of experience I ever wanted to have again. And yet, I still had this dream.

That’s when I found health coaching. Or it found me. I got healthy with the help of a gifted healer and yogi, and that’s when I got interested in this health thing. Food as medicine was a novel concept for me. When I saw how well it worked, I wanted to share it with everyone I knew.

Now, here I am – 10 years later. I’ve decided to start journaling my dreams again. There’s something to it. The more specific you get, the faster you can achieve your dreams.

So why wouldn’t you write down your dreams in detail? Are you afraid they might come true? I dare you to try it and see how quickly you attract the things that make your heart sing.

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